Once walked with Gods

Chapter 22

The shame of a coward lies in the eyes of the innocents he condemns. The staging camp had been abandoned and forgotten for over nine years, ever since the last of the refugees from Hausolis had been housed elsewhere. Nine years was a long time in the rainforest. Beeth had been hard at work. Growth had been voracious but the canopy above was still thin.

The camp lay an hour into the forest beyond the southern wall of the Ultan. It had been fashioned in a natural clearing, expanded to house twelve long low dormitory buildings made of mud, timber and thatch and one large covered area for eating, resting and sheltering. The latrines and baths had been located inside buildings attached to each dormitory.

At its busiest, the camp had housed over fifteen hundred people. Katyett walked in with more than twice that number and found the camp in worse repair than her scout had intimated. From a quick glance, she knew that four dormitory roofs had collapsed, that the open-sided covered area was unsafe with the sheer weight of ivy, vine, lichen and mould swamping it, and that the four-foot-high grass and undergrowth would be a happy hunting ground for every predator in the forest.

But it was the best they were able to provide beyond a forced march to Taanepol, which, at the pace of the Ynissul civilians, would have taken at least six days. The attrition rate among those they’d saved would have been appalling. It might be dangerous here for a while but at least it was manageable.

Katyett looked back at the column and closed her eyes at the numbers she saw. She sent TaiGethen into the camp to beat the grass and scare off whatever they could before bringing them all in and making them find their own spots. TaiGethen then patrolled through them while others searched every building, trying to identify where the civilians could go.

Olmaat was set down among the civilians and was immediately fussed over by Ynissul iads, who produced cloth and salve from seemingly nowhere. Katyett saw a smile on his face that touched his eyes for the first time since he’d left the Gardaryn with Jarinn and Lorius.

‘Graf, Merrat, Pakiir, Faleen.’ The four TaiGethen trotted over. ‘We need to work fast. We’re lucky because the rain isn’t coming back for an hour or two. Not until dawn has broken anyway. I need you to find every willing iad and ula you can and divide them, one group to each spare Tai. By spare I mean all those not engaged protecting the rest.

‘I need working parties to clear vegetation from the dormitories that are viable and, if you’re feeling brave, from the bivouac roof. If we can make that safe, we can billet a lot of people there.

‘I want others to start collecting food. Yniss knows we need Beeth to provide us a bounty beyond imagining. So berries, roots, herbs. Not just for food, medicine too. Let’s not be naive. We’re here with people who will get bitten, scratched, stung and infested. We’ll need pots of the critical stuff. Tea tree, vismia, verbena and pareira as a minimum.

‘I want others to get down to the river. We’ve got spears with us so we can attach vines and fish. I need traps for meat. Tual save me, I don’t need to tell you. As much as you can as often as you can. Pass your knowledge as you need to. We have to keep the camp smoke-and flame-free, so teach steaming and how to build a rock oven, clay stoves, anything. Get them involved in their own survival. Let them sit and fester and they’ll get desperate and difficult. Inspire and survive, as Takaar would have said. We’re only three miles from the Ultan. We don’t need wanderers and we don’t need attention.

‘Anything else?’

Merrat chuckled. ‘No, we understand. And that just leaves you to do the talk, right?’

‘Which talk?’

Merrat spread her hands. ‘Rainforest survival, naturally. Just a pity you haven’t got all your skins, shells and paintings, isn’t it?’

Katyett thinned her lips and glowered at Merrat, though there was a little warmth of humour in her gut.

‘And you, Merrat, can take your party to do the most important job in the camp.’

Merrat’s mirth dissipated. ‘I don’t want to ask, do I?’

Katyett shook her head. ‘No, but I am ordering you to ask just the same.’

Merrat laughed. ‘My Arch Katyett, leader of the TaiGethen. Which is the most important job in the camp?’

‘Latrines,’ said Katyett. ‘Latrines for three thousand elves unused to trail food and exposure to heat and rain. And you’ll be close enough to hear my talk too. How lucky you are. Sorry, Merrat, I didn’t catch that.’

‘I said Yniss blesses me with the tasks he sets.’

‘He does, my Tai. He really does.’ Pelyn hadn’t persuaded them to go upstairs. In the end it didn’t matter. If there was one thing for which Sildaan could be relied on, it was punctuality. The skies had remained clear for her too. The sun was banishing shadows from the top of the canopy behind them. It rose to sparkle against the tall spire of the Gardaryn.

Down on the approaches to the harbour, in the quarters of the city the Cefans and Orrans had cornered for their own in a loose alliance, or so Tulan had grudgingly revealed, it didn’t matter that the skies were clear. It rained anyway. Teardrops of pure, beautiful and terrifying dark yellow. They fell dense and heavy like Gyal’s grief, trailing smoke.

Behind them, orbs of brown and green traced up high into the sky, crashing down on buildings or disappearing from sight, their impacts told by the rumbles and echoes of detonation. The rain set alight everything it touched. Quickly, the whole of Harbour Side and Salt were ablaze. Thick smoke fled into the heavens.

Pelyn had stood and walked to the window to get a closer look. The three of them had belatedly moved onto a balcony, their unfettered view all the more terrifying. Pelyn thought she could hear screams and the clash of weapons. It was hard to be sure. But she knew what she felt.

Yniss had turned from them. Tual had retreated to his fastness in the forest. Shorth’s arms would have to be wide indeed to embrace all the souls heading his way. Men and magic were rampaging through the elven first city. She watched their castings rise and fall. She felt heat from the fire and cold from the ice.

She felt a terror so deep it reached through her and back into history. It chilled the souls of the ancients in the halls of the dead. It rooted her where she stood and meant she cared little that her cloak was hanging open or that her erstwhile guards were standing at her shoulders. Not as captors, as Al-Arynaar behind their Arch.

Pelyn stared while the echoes of light danced on the backs of her eyes. She stood as the skies began to darken for the first rains of the day and the streets drummed already with the sound of the footsteps of elves fleeing they knew not where. And then she turned from the raw power battering her streets and stared straight into Tulan’s stupefied eyes.

‘So do you still think you should serve me up to be raped by every Tuali ula in Ysundeneth, or are you going to go and find me some clothes and a sword?’ Katyett and the TaiGethen had been drawn to the north end of the camp some time before dawn as if in response to a growing threat. The nose for danger was, Takaar said, the single biggest difference between a Tai warrior and any other elf. Katyett disagreed, preferring to think of her speed and reactions as her greatest assets.

Whoever was right, there was no doubting the feeling that they all shared. It was going to be a beautiful morning in one respect only. And while the skies lightened to a glorious blue sluggishly filling with cloud, the scent on the air was bitter and cloying. Calaius smelled wrong.

The more curious of the Ynissul refugees had begun to join them, looking towards the coast, over the Ultan’s walls and down towards Ysundeneth, the highest spires of which were just about visible on a clear morning such as this. Katyett looked to her left. The iad she had spoken to on the trail yesterday was standing between her and Merrat, his partner behind her. She was called Onelle, and if Katyett could save one elf in all this, it would be her.

‘I don’t think you’ll want to see this,’ she said.

‘What is it?’ asked Onelle.

‘Awful power unleashed indiscriminately,’ said Katyett, feeling a sense of helplessness with which she was unfamiliar.

‘Tualis grasping power,’ said Onelle.

Katyett shook her head. ‘You’re looking in the wrong place for your enemy. This is the hand of man under the eye of the cascarg Ynissul. Rogue Tualis are being opportunistic in their atrocities and the grasping of influence.’

Onelle wanted to say more but a bloom of green light, tinged brown, grew above the city, casting lurid shadows across the ocean. Myriad flashes of deep yellow light appeared in the sky, falling like blossom. Deep-coloured flashes low to the ground, throwing spikes of light up the spires. Flames, yellow and hungry, ate at helpless timbers.

Katyett swallowed, her throat dry. A cold rage sank deep into her body and soul. Ynissul at the heart of this evil. Ynissul possessed by greed, distorted self-importance and a curious revisionism regarding Takaar. It was not the way of the Ynissul to have such short memories. But then, recognising the truth would be inconvenient.

‘What are we going to do?’ whispered Merrat.

‘Wait,’ said Katyett. ‘Do nothing different to the plan. Ta-Auum and Serrin will return soon. We’ll have our answers then and perhaps a banner to walk beneath.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Onelle, then blushed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to intrude on your conversation.’

‘This concerns you as much as it does us,’ said Katyett. ‘What don’t you understand?’

There had to be fifty fires in the city. And more of the deviant power the men had brought with them in evidence. Olmaat had warned them what they’d see. But he didn’t mention how it squeezed at the soul. How the very air felt tainted and the land beneath their feet poisoned.

‘Why won’t we go back when the Ynissul have forced order on the city?’

‘Order?’ said Merrat. ‘Sorry.’

Katyett shook her head. ‘They are not restoring the harmony. They have no interest in its maintenance. If you believe in the Ynissul right to rule, then you will find friends there. If not, you should stay with us.’

‘How can the harmony be restored after what has happened to us?’ asked Onelle.

‘Because even after the War of Bloods, we learned to live together. To forgive in time. But we can’t think that far ahead yet because it assumes a resolution that leaves the Ynissul in control.’

‘You think they might not beat the threads with the power they have at their right hands?’ asked Rydd, Onelle’s partner.

‘Oh I have no doubt whatever that Ysundeneth will be cowed by the magic of man. What I fear is the next step.’

‘Why?’ asked Onelle.

Katyett shrugged. ‘Because if I was a man, I would know I wielded all the power and I would have no desire to remain in the pay of any elf.’ Takaar roared his agony and Auum feared for the fallen hero’s life. His collapse had been dramatic, his head striking a rock on the way down. Auum had picked him up, still with the deer around his neck, and run back to the camp. At first he had no idea what had afflicted Takaar. A bite, a sting. A disease he had been fighting. It could have been anything.

But there were no physical signs of any of those things. When he could, when Takaar’s body was calm enough, Auum checked for bite marks, the tiny sharp red pinpoints that might mean a sting. He looked for discoloured skin, for boils, sores, foam at the mouth, cracks on the scalp, split skin on the feet. Nothing. Nothing at all.

Whatever raged within Takaar seemed to be confined to his mind, but the pain it brought him, the desperate look in his eyes whenever he forced them open to plead with Auum for help, was excruciating to witness. Feeling utterly helpless, Auum tried to make him comfortable, tried to get water into him and warmth too. He was shivering as if cold, though this dawn was glorious.

Auum had lit a fire. Had skinned the deer and hung joints above it to roast. The scent was magnificent. Perhaps it would help. Takaar’s torment had been going on for an hour as the sun rose and the clouds gathered. Periodically, he pawed at the ground only to snatch his hands away as if he’d touched hot embers.

Takaar’s eyes flickered open. They steadied but were not focused on Auum. They looked beyond him, away over the rainforest to the west.

‘Gnawing fires,’ he said. ‘Globes puking brown power. Eating everything.’

‘Takaar?’ Auum tried to get into his eye line, to get him to come back to himself. ‘Are you bitten? Are you poisoned?’

‘It rages through the lines. They run but their footprints turn to ash. Wickedness walks the streets. Feeding on the helpless. There is no defence. Why does the rain not fall?’

‘It’s coming,’ said Auum. ‘Soon.’

Takaar made no sign that he had heard Auum. ‘Separation. Cowering. The spire is lit up. They don’t believe. Hope is only scattered splinters.’

‘Please,’ said Auum. ‘Talk to me.’

Takaar’s voice dropped to a low mumble and nothing he said was distinct. His body had stilled now; only his eyes moved. He was blinking very rapidly. Abruptly, he relaxed completely. Tension flooded from him and he took in a deep and even breath.

‘They are killing us,’ he said. ‘And we have ushered them in.’

‘Who?’ asked Auum. ‘Men?’

Takaar’s eyes rested on Auum.

‘I know why you came here. I am not stupid.’

Auum fought to meet Takaar’s gaze. It sliced straight through to his soul.

‘We need you,’ he said. ‘Not just the TaiGethen. All the elves. They are unpicking all you have done. We’re going back to the War of Bloods unless you agree to stand with us. Unite us again.’

Takaar sat up and pushed himself back to sit against the bole of a tree in his bivouac. His head was shaking side to side, a small and rapid movement. He glanced to one side.

‘I know I caused it. You have no need to remind me of that again. You have been reminding me of my failing every day for ten years. Let me think.’

Auum found a vision in his head of walking into Ysundeneth with Takaar, only for him to gibber and argue with the voice in his head. Some saviour. Doubt swept him yet again.

‘Come back with me. Talk to the TaiGethen and the Silent at least. They are waiting for you.’ Auum took a breath, knowing what he was about to say was a gamble in Takaar’s fraught emotional state. ‘Katyett is waiting for you.’

Takaar didn’t react at once. His eyes searched the ground to his left. A hand rubbed idly at the earth.

‘She is alive?’ Takaar nodded to himself and tears began to fall down his cheeks. ‘She is the core of my betrayal. My cowardice. I was never worthy of her attentions and her love. I proved that, didn’t I?’

Auum said nothing in response. Takaar seemed to be searching inside himself. Auum prayed it was to seek the strength he would need in the days to come.

‘Takaar? I am TaiGethen. You are my brother and my Arch. Still to this day. Nothing has changed. We exist to serve Yniss in the ways you taught us. So I ask this of you. Come back to lead us. Come back to unite the threads. Come back to repair the harmony and bring us back into the grace of Yniss.’

Takaar stared at him for a long time. Fat from the deer hissed and spat into the fire.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘What happened when I ran?’